A photo of Yuriy Baglaenko.

Yuriy Baglaenko, PhD


  • Member, Division of Human Genetics
  • Assistant Professor, UC Department of Pediatrics

About

Biography

I'm a research scientist focused on immunology, genetics and genomics. I aim to use new technologies to unlock the mysteries of inflammatory diseases. My research is a mixture of experimental and computational work with large-scale datasets.

My interest in this work stems from my training and a deep desire to better understand the immune system and how its dysregulation leads to disease. I have an overwhelming need to push scientific boundaries! “Crazy but important” is our group motto. Ultimately, it's all rooted in the idea that my work can benefit people by understanding disease causes or leading to tangibly better outcomes. That is why I chose immunology and genetics as a discipline all those years ago.

My research goals are to better understand gene regulation in T and B cells, finding and validating causal autoimmune variants, developing new experimental and computational single-cell tools, and using cutting-edge genomic editing technologies to drive our understanding and treatment of autoimmune diseases.

I’m excited about my work in progress, a multiomic single-cell assay for linking clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) editing to cell surface antibody expression and the transcriptome. This is a radically better way of assaying CRISPR-edited cells at the single-cell level. My other important contributions include large-scale single-cell studies in infectious disease and methods related to that analysis, producing a better understanding of dynamic gene regulation in T cells and CRISPR editing of human primary B cells.

I've been a researcher for over 13 years and began working at Cincinnati Children's in 2023. Being a researcher can be difficult as experimental science is hard, and failure is part of the equation; however, it's how we learn and grow. Experimentation is the willingness to fail in order to learn. To find out more about our group, please visit our webpage, baglaenkolab.com.

BSc: University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2010.

PhD: University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2017.

Postdoctoral Fellowship: Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Broad Institute, Boston, MA, 2023.

Interests

Immunology: understanding dynamic gene regulation in B and T cells; genetics: defining causal variation in autoimmune disorders; genomics: expanding the repertoire of single cell technologies

Research Areas

Human Genetics

Publications

The intestinal microbiota modulates the transcriptional landscape of iNKT cells at steady-state and following antigen exposure. Lin, Q; Kuypers, M; Baglaenko, Y; Cao, E; Hezaveh, K; Despot, T; de Amat Herbozo, C; Cruz Tleugabulova, M; Umaña, JM; McGaha, TL; Philpott, DJ; Mallevaey, T. Mucosal Immunology. 2024; 17:226-237.

Immunosuppression causes dynamic changes in expression QTLs in psoriatic skin. Xiao, Q; Mears, J; Nathan, A; Ishigaki, K; Baglaenko, Y; Lim, N; Cooney, LA; Harris, KM; Anderson, MS; Fox, DA; Smilek, DE; Krueger, JG; Raychaudhuri, S. Nature Communications. 2023; 14:6268.

Elevated Levels of Interferon-α Act Directly on B Cells to Breach Multiple Tolerance Mechanisms Promoting Autoantibody Production. Ferri, DM; Nassar, C; Manion, KP; Kim, M; Baglaenko, Y; Muñoz-Grajales, C; Wither, JE. Arthritis and Rheumatology. 2023; 75:1542-1555.

Making inroads to precision medicine for the treatment of autoimmune diseases: Harnessing genomic studies to better diagnose and treat complex disorders. Baglaenko, Y; Wagner, C; Bhoj, VG; Brodin, P; Gershwin, ME; Graham, D; Invernizzi, P; Kidd, KK; Korsunsky, I; Levy, M; Wilson, M; Rose, NR; Ladd, V; Sirota, M. 2023; 1:e25.

Single-cell eQTL models reveal dynamic T cell state dependence of disease loci. Nathan, A; Asgari, S; Ishigaki, K; Valencia, C; Amariuta, T; Luo, Y; Beynor, JI; Baglaenko, Y; Suliman, S; Price, AL; Lecca, L; Murray, MB; Moody, DB; Raychaudhuri, S. Nature. 2022; 606:120-128.

Genome editing to define the function of risk loci and variants in rheumatic disease. Baglaenko, Y; Macfarlane, D; Marson, A; Nigrovic, PA; Raychaudhuri, S. Nature reviews. Rheumatology. 2021; 17:462-474.

Multimodally profiling memory T cells from a tuberculosis cohort identifies cell state associations with demographics, environment and disease. Nathan, A; Beynor, JI; Baglaenko, Y; Suliman, S; Ishigaki, K; Asgari, S; Huang, CC; Luo, Y; Zhang, Z; Lopez, K; Van Rhijn, I; Moody, DB; Murray, MB; Raychaudhuri, S. Nature Immunology. 2021; 22:781-793.

Impaired B cell anergy is not sufficient to breach tolerance to nuclear antigen in Vκ8/3H9 lupus-prone mice. Manion, KP; Baglaenko, Y; Chang, NH; Talaei, N; Wither, JE. PloS one. 2020; 15:e0236664.

TYK2 inhibition reduces type 3 immunity and modifies disease progression in murine spondyloarthritis. Gracey, E; Hromadová, D; Lim, M; Qaiyum, Z; Zeng, M; Yao, Y; Srinath, A; Baglaenko, Y; Yeremenko, N; Westlin, W; Masse, C; Müller, M; Strobl, B; Miao, W; Inman, RD. The Journal of Clinical Investigation. 2020; 130:1863-1878.

Allele-specific expression changes dynamically during T cell activation in HLA and other autoimmune loci. Gutierrez-Arcelus, M; Baglaenko, Y; Arora, J; Hannes, S; Luo, Y; Amariuta, T; Teslovich, N; Rao, DA; Ermann, J; Jonsson, AH; Gregersen, PK; Esko, T; Brenner, MB; Raychaudhuri, S. Nature Genetics. 2020; 52:247-253.